Quote

The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.

Robert M. Pirsig

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert M. Pirsig
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 6
Died: 2017
Died: April 24
Autobiographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Robert Maynard Pirsig
Climbing
Brought
Mountain
Thoughts
Find
Summit

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

Image
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on good rather than on time.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
What I am is a heretic who's recanted, and thereby in everyone's eyes saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Science values static patterns.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
An evolutionary morality argues that The North was right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution than a human body and the principle of human equality is an even higher form than a nation
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Substance is a subspecies of value. When you reverse the containment process and define substance in terms of value the mystery disappears: substance is a stable pattern of inorganic values. The problem then disappears. The world of objects and the world of values is unified.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
Robert M. Pirsig